Aug 24, 2022 – In the Afterlife, Ch 4 (FR-13)
Author: mmooch
Chapter Summary: **Part of the 2022 August Fic-a-Day Challenge** Buffy and Tony talk about money…and the lack thereof.
Crossover: MCU, Avengers
Rating: FR-13
Word count: 1150
Challenge: for the livejournal 2022 August Fic-a-Day Challenge
Timeline: post season 5 for BtVS, post EG for MCU
Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy. MCU characters belong to Marvel, Disney et al. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.
Summers’ home
As they drank coffee together the next morning, Buffy and Tony discussed their plans for the next few days.
“If you have a couple thousand in your account, I could use that as seed money to go to Vegas and earn as much as possible until the casinos catch on,” Tony commented casually.
His utter confidence surprised Buffy. “You’re really that good at gambling?” she asked.
“Most of the card games are math and probability, which happen to be a couple of my specialties. Back home, the casinos would only allow me to bet on craps or roulette. I didn’t even bother with the slots,” he replied.
“When my mom died, Giles took over the finances…he said he’d teach me once Glory was dealt with, and you know how that all turned out,” she said. “But I know where he kept the bills, so unless that changed in my absence, we should be able to see what’s left.” With that, she went to the desk and brought back a stack of papers and a checkbook.
“This doesn’t seem as tidy as I remembered,” Buffy confessed. “And some of these envelopes say second notice on them. That’s bad, right?”
“I would think so, but my bills were paid by an accountant, so I don’t know from personal experience what happens if something doesn’t get paid,” he admitted, opening the checkbook. “You died in May, right? The handwriting in here changed in June.” He showed her the entries.
“That’s Willow’s handwriting. I wonder why she took over,” she mused and looked at the last entries. “There’s only a couple hundred dollars in here!”
Tony waved a paper in the air and said, “There’s a bigger problem; one of these past due notices is for the mortgage and it says that if they don’t get payment within 60 days, they’ll start the foreclosure process. New plan. I get enough from the casinos to get the bills up-to-date, then worry about getting enough for the accelerator. It took a while for the toxicity levels to get high enough to be a problem before, and assuming that I have the same timeline here, it’ll be months until it’s serious.”
“You shouldn’t have to do that, Tony,” Buffy disagreed, but only half-heartedly. She’d need some kind of help so she and Dawn didn’t end up homeless. “Maybe I can ask Giles for money? I mean, I did get him back pay from the Council, so--”
“He’s paid to be your handler?” Tony interrupted, looking confused.
“Watcher,” she corrected, then nodded, “And yeah.”
“So why don’t they pay you?” he asked. “I mean, it doesn’t sound like you can hold a regular job and do your slaying, unless your boss knows about your night gig and let’s you take off if something happens during the day.”
“Slayers don’t usually live long enough to worry about adulting stuff. The first time I died was when I was sixteen and I’m only twenty now,” she reminded him.
That news made him think of Peter and he cursed softly. “I hate whatever being came up with the idea of making teen girls responsible for the world’s safety. Back to the money issue, though, when you call Giles to let him know you’re alive again, tell him that you want the Council to pay you as well. It’s only right that they pay your living expenses so you can concentrate on protecting humanity.”
Buffy pondered that for a moment, then said, “I should have done that when I got him reinstated; don’t know why I didn’t think of it.”
“You had bigger problems to worry about, I imagine,” he retorted with a sad smirk.
“True.” She glanced at the clock and saw it was finally late enough for her to call England and actually reach Giles – if he went straight to the place he was staying after the plane landed.
It took her telling him what they argued about just before the big fight to make him believe she wasn’t the bot pretending to be her, which made Tony reel back in disgust when he heard it. He’d have to have a little chat with this man when they met.
“Whatever Willow and the others did to bring me back had a side effect they weren’t counting on. Somebody came back with me; a hero from another dimension,” she explained before Giles could panic at who that person/thing could be. “Only trouble is, he was de-aged to a point in his life where he was dying and we need to figure out how to get the money so he can fix the issue.
“Which brings me to my next problem. There’s no money left in my mom’s account, and I have a stack of unpaid bills. Can you talk to the Council about putting me on the payroll?” she paused, then answered his question, “I don’t know why they didn’t mention it to you. I haven’t seen them since right after we dealt with the demon gang trying to take over Sunnydale.”
There was another pause, and she said, “As much as I need to see you again to reassure myself this is real, I think the money issue might be more important right now, so take the time you need to convince those pillocks to fork over some loot,” she commanded with a grin, knowing he’d polish his glasses at her English curse. “Once we get a total of the unpaid bills, I’ll call you back with how much I need immediately.”
When she hung up, Buffy gave a heavy sigh and put her head in her hands. Tony took a chance and walked over to give her a hug – he had gotten better at physical contact once Morgan was born. It had been too late to matter with Peter, but he wouldn’t let his hang-ups come between him and Buffy.
“My list of annoyances keeps getting longer and we haven’t even been back for 24 hours,” she muttered into his shoulder. “And this one was stupid; why couldn’t they tell him about the money thing? It’s not as if he wouldn’t understand.”
Tony didn’t think that was necessarily true, depending on what they spent the money on, but he wouldn’t speculate until he knew for certain one way or another.
“Let’s find something for breakfast and work on those bills,” he suggested instead. “Is there a computer in the house?”
“Not unless Willow has one,” Buffy said. “I didn’t have my own for college when I was going, and Mom’s was at the gallery.”
“Okay, let’s do this the old-fashioned way,” he complained over-dramatically. “But keep this in mind, paper makes me break out in hives!”
“Poor baby,” she snarked back. “I’ll find you some cheese to go with that whine.”
He smiled at her and cupped her cheek fondly. “Pepper would have loved your sass.”
A/N: Musie was so stubborn today and I didn’t get to the part I wanted to. But I don’t want to start the awkward conversation with Willow, so it’ll have to wait until the next chapter.